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Sunday, October 2, 2011

Bill Clinton Whines About Wanting More Credit For Welfare Reform, Balanced Budget; No Challenge From Politico

At the Politico, James Hohmann's biography page indicates that he is "an Honors graduate of Stanford University" who "studied American political history." I hope he skipped class during the time his profs covered the 1990s, because if not, he and many other classmates have been badly misled.

Hohmann covered Bill Clinton's commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of his presidential candidacy announcement at his library in Little Rock, Arkansas, and let the following Clintonian howlers go by without challenge:

Bill Clinton wants more credit

Bill Clinton thinks he deserves more credit for reforming welfare and balancing the budget.

"I go crazy every time I read the conventional wisdom," he said Friday night at his presidential library in Little Rock, Ark. "So part of the Republican narrative is that I was 'saved' from myself by the election of the Republican Congress [in 1994] that 'forced me' to do welfare reform and ‘made the balanced budget possible.'"
Clinton said reporters and commentators “keep saying this, overlooking all relevant facts.”

The 42nd president said Arkansas had been a test case for reform during his governorship. At the federal level, he said 43 states received federal waivers to implement welfare reform before the GOP-controlled House passed the final bill.
“And yet I kept reading how this was ‘a Republican idea,’ just because President Reagan had a good story about a welfare queen and a Cadillac who didn’t exist,” Clinton said.

The feisty comments came during 20 minutes of unscripted remarks that immediately followed a one-hour panel discussion commemorating the 20th anniversary of Clinton announcing his run for president in front of the nearby state house. They showcased a Clinton determined to present himself as a transformational figure.

The historical record shows that Bill Clinton doesn't deserve credit for welfare reform, and doesn't deserve credit for the balanced budget.